
The Wage-Earning Woman and The State 

A Reply to Miss Minnie Bronson. 

BY 

EDITH ABBOTT, Ph. D. 

of Hull-House Chicago 
and 

SOPHONISBA P: BRECKINRIDGE, LL. B., Ph. D. 

Assistant Professor of Social Economy, in the University of Chicago. 


Directors of the Department of Social Investigation 
in the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy. 


Boston Equal Suffrage Association for Good Government 

585 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass* 

'■^^96 



















TK 

. Asi PREFACE. 

This reply to Miss Bronson’s pamphlet has been written by Miss 
S. P. Breckinridge and Miss Edith Abbott, who are both well qualified, 
not only by rather unusual academic training, but also by practical 
experience, to speak authoritatively on questions relating to wage¬ 
earning women. 

Miss Breckinridge is a graduate of Wellesley College, and later 
received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science from 
The University of Chicago. Since 1902, she has been a member of 
the faculty of the University of Chicago’, where she has given courses 
attended by both men and women on “The Legal Status of Labor’’ 
and “The Legal Position of Women.’’ In *1904 she was made a Doctor 
of Law, and she was also the first woman to be admitted to the bar of 
Kentucky, although she has never actively practised. Since 1907 
she has been, in addition, head of the Department of Social Investi¬ 
gation at the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, which dis¬ 
burses a budget of $10,000 from a grant of the Russell Sage Foundation, 
and which has published a series of valuable studies on social conditions 
in Chicago. Miss Breckinridge is also identified with many social 
interests in Chicago. She is President of the Woman’s City Club; 
Secretary of the Immigrants’ Protective League; a member of the 
Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society, of the Consumers’ League, 
and of other similar organizations. 

Miss Edith Abbott was graduated from the University of Ne¬ 
braska, and later received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 
Economics and Law from the University of Chicago. She was for two 
years a Fellow of the University, and studied in Europe for one year 
at the University of London in the School of Economics. After teach¬ 
ing political economy at Wellesley College for one year, she entered 
the School of Civics and Philanthropy, where she has been Associate 
Director for the last five years. She is the author of a very authorita¬ 
tive work entitled “Women in Industry; A Study in American Econ¬ 
omic History.’’ Her knowledge of the conditions surrounding working 
women is by no means confined to America. She is in constant cor¬ 
respondence with the people most interested in the conditions of working 
women in England and the continental countries, and by travel and 
correspondence has kept lierself well informed concerning the legal 
and industrial changes which affect the lives of women the world over. 
Both Miss Breckinridge and Miss Abbott are personally acquainted 
with hundreds of working women. Miss Abbott has been a resident 
of Hull House for the last few years, and Miss Bfeckinridge is in resi¬ 
dence each year during her three months’ vacat^p from teaching at 
the University. They thus add to their scholarly qualifications a 
keen and living interest in thousands of working women. 


Hull House, Chicago. 


JANE ADDAMS. 


“The statement is sometimes made that the franchise 
for women would be valuable only so far as the educated 
women exercised it. This statement totally disregards the 
fact that those matters in which women’s judgment is most 
needed are far too primitive and basic to be largely influ¬ 
enced by what we call education. The sanitary condition 
of all the factories and workshops, for instance, in which 
the industrial processes are at present carried on in great 
cities, intimately affects the health and lives of thousands 
of working women .”—Jane Addams. 



The Wage-Earning Woman and The State. 

A REPLY TO MISS MINNIE BRONSON. 

A pamphlet entitled ‘The Wage-Earning 
Woman and the State^Tasbeen widely circulated 
by the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the 
Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. It is 
written to prove that woman suffrage will not 
lead to fairer treatment of women in industry or 
to better laws for their protection. In support 
of this thesis, the author of the pamphlet, Miss 
Minnie Bronson, stands practically alone, opposed 
to the women who, as a result of long years of ex¬ 
perience, are qualified to speak as to the conditions 
under which women work, the difficulties that 
have been surmounted in securing for them such 
protective legislation as has been gained, and the 
need of further efforts in their behalf. 

Miss Jane Addams of Hull-House, Mrs. 
Florence Kelley, Secretary of the National Con¬ 
sumers’ League, Mrs. Raymond Robins, President 
of the National Women’s Trade Union League, 
Miss Helen Marot, Secretary of the New York 
Women’s Trade Union League, Miss Josephine 
Goldmark, and many others who speak with 
authority on subjects connected with women’s 
work are earnest believers in woman suffrage 
as the surest method of bringing about such reforms 
as are needed for the protection of working 
women. 

This pamphlet contains a list of the positions 
held at various times by Miss Bronson before she 
became a paid representative of the anti-suf¬ 
fragists. It appears that Miss Bronson was a 


high school teacher of mathematics from 1889 to 
1899, and it is interesting to note that, out of 
nine different positions which she held during the 
years between 1899 and 1910, only two, both of 
which were temporary appointments with the 
United States Bureau of Labor, the first lasting 
about two years and the second for six months, 
indicate any qualification for attempting to speak 
authoritatively upon questions affecting the lives 
and interests of working women. 

Inasmuch, then, as Miss Bronson is not 
herself an authority upon questions relating to 
women in industry and is so radically opposed 
to the great body of testimony on the subject, 
it is important to examine her statements care¬ 
fully. Her opening paragraph shows that she 
does not understand the woman suffrage argu¬ 
ment, and it may be that, even for reasonably 
intelligent members of the community, that 
argument must be presented in simpler terms. 
The great majority of the advocates of woman 
suffrage would hold, for example, that at least 
two mis-statements are contained in the following 
sentence taken from the first page of her pamphlet: 
^^The claim is made that the laws on our statute 
books are unjust to the wage-earning woman, and 
that the only redress from this discrimination is 
the ballot.In the first place, suffragists do not 
claim that the working-woman’s ^^only” redress is 
through the ballot; they do say and believe that 
the ballot is the swiftest and most direct means 
of bringing about such reforms as are demanded; 
but, since they are denied the ballot, these same 
women are devoting a disproportionately large 
measure of time and strength in trying to bring 
about these reforms in other ways. In the second 
place, so far as women in industry are concerned, 
suffragists are not so much disturbed about ^daws 


6 


on our statute books’^ which are unjust to the 
working woman as they are about the very general 
absence of adequate protective legislation in her 
behalf. 

‘‘Fallacious Arguments from the Shirt Waist Strike.” 

The second section in Miss Bronson^s pamph¬ 
let is devoted to ^Tallacious Arguments from the 
Shirtwaist Strike.’^ It is claimed that a suffragist 
said in a public speech, ^Tf the women engaged in 
this industry had had the ballot such a strike as 
theirs would have been unnecessary.^’ The anti¬ 
suffrage comment is that the suffragists did not 
know that many of the strikers were either im¬ 
migrants or were under twenty-one. This again is 
a misrepresentation, probably due to a misunder¬ 
standing of the suffragist attitude. When we 
say that if women had a vote there would be an 
end of child labor, and that young girls would 
work shorter hours, this does not mean that we 
think the children in the mills and factories and 
workshops are going to be allowed to vote. Re¬ 
membering that in England conditions improved 
for all workingmen when some workmen got the 
vote, we believe that in this country, when some 
women get the vote, conditions for all working- 
women will improve, and the day will come when 
there will be no working children. 

Laws for the Protection of Wage-Earning Men. 

Not only has Miss Bronson evidently failed 
to understand the arguments put forth by the 
suffragists, but she has also failed to acquaint 
herself with the principles and history of labor 
legislation in the United States. She seems rather 
to have sought out for use in this pamphlet a few 
illustrations which may perhaps give an impression 


7 


of superficial familiarity with the labor laws of the 
various States, but which indicate a lack of under¬ 
standing of the facts about protective legislation. 
The opening paragraph (on page 2) of her ''compar¬ 
ative study,closes with the statement that "the 
laws enacted for the protection of wage-earning 
women are more beneficent and more far reaching 
than the laws for the protection of wage-earning 
men.’’ By way of comment, any fair minded 
person need only recall the long series of statutes 
enacted in all the leading industrial states, cover¬ 
ing a period of nearly three-fourths of a century, 
as a result of the efforts of workingmen to 
bring about through legislation a larger meas¬ 
ure of justice than they could obtain through 
their attempts to bargain with individual em¬ 
ployers. Thus we have the anti-truck laws; 
laws providing for the weekly payment of wages; 
the mechanics’ lien laws; the assignment of wages 
laws; laws making employes preferred creditors; 
laws providing for liability of stockholders for 
wage debts; exemption of workingmen’s tools and 
wages from attachment for debt; laws requiring 
safety appliances and protection against accidents; 
laws allowing time to vote without loss of pay; 
laws preventing the coercion of employes in the 
exercise of suffrage; laws regulating prison labor; 
the trade union laws regarding blacklisting, pro¬ 
tection of the union label, and so on; the laws 
providing for an eight-hour day for federal, state, 
and municipal employes, nearly all of whom are 
men; the laws relating to mining and railroad 
labor; and many similar laws. Moreover, it 
should be understood that this legislation, al¬ 
though it may in a few cases protect the working- 
woman as well as the workingman, represents the 
results of long years of earnest struggle by working¬ 
men with votes to improve their condition. And 


8 


yet Miss Bronson entirely ignores this great mass 
of legislation enacted to protect the workingman, 
while she lays stress on the fact that some states 
have a few special provisions designed to protect 
wage-earning women from exploitation which is 
likely to injure their health and endanger the 
health of their children. 


Comparison of Laws in Suffragfe and Non-Suffra§:e States. 

The chief points of attack, however, in this an¬ 
ti-suffrage pamphlet are the fact that protective 
legislation for women is found on the statute 
books of some states where women do not vote, 
and that in a few states where women do vote 
similar laws have not yet been passed. The 
questions at issue here are so confused by the 
method of presentation that it may be worth 
while to state them in some detail. 

(a) The first point in Miss Bronson^s argu¬ 
ment is that protective legislation has been obtained 
in states where women do not vote. No suffra¬ 
gist would deny this. It is, of course, well known 
that most of this legislation was obtained through 
the laborious efforts of suffragists. American 
women would probably have got the vote long ago 
if they had followed the present English method of 
making suffrage a paramount issue first, last, and 
all the time. Instead of this. Miss Jane Addams in 
Illinois, Mrs. Florence Kelley in New York, and 
a host of other ardent suffragists have labored 
with the greatest devotion and self-sacrifice to 
secure protective legislation for women and chil¬ 
dren. How much effort they have put into it, 
how much time and energy it has cost, only those 
who have been closely associated with them know. 
It should not be forgotten that, as the result of 
their experience, they say that the ballot is the 


9 


swiftest and surest way to bring about the reforms 
which are asked by and for the women workers of 
this country. 

(b) A very different question is the point 
which the anti-suffragist confuses with this,—the 
fact that such protective legislation does not exist 
in some of the states in which women have the bal¬ 
lot. No argument on this point is worth noticing 
which ignores the special needs of these states. Col¬ 
orado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah are all mining and 
agricultural states, and have very few wage-earning 
women who are employed in factories. It would 
be as foolish to reproach the women of Idaho for 
not protecting factory girls who do not exist as to 
reproach the men of Massachusetts because they 
have failed to pass irrigation laws. Massachusetts 
had 152,713 women employed in ^^manufacturing 
and mechanical pursuits’^ when the last U. S. 
census of occupations was taken; Idaho had only 
681. A similar contrast might be drawn for any 
of the other states: thus Wyoming had 501 women 
in industrial occupations, while New York in the 
same year had 136,788. 

Miss Bronson attaches so much importance 
to her arguments on this point that they should 
perhaps be considered in greater detail. For 
example, she says that ^^thirty-nine states com¬ 
pel employers in stores, factories, shops, etc., to 
provide seats for female e'mployes. Nine states 
have no such laws, and one of the nine states is a 
suffrage state.If conditions in all states were 
alike, this might indicate that states in which 
women vote give less protection to workingwomen 
than states in which women do not vote. The one 
suffrage state, however, that fails to provide seats 
for saleswomen is Idaho, which according to the 
census had 153 saleswomen in the entire state at a 
time when Massachusetts had 11,985, Illinois 


10 


12,149 and New York 30,858.Those who know 
the small store in the small western town know 
that the personal relation still exists between em¬ 
ployer and clerk, and that the clerk is usually a 
mature woman, who is not in the same need of 
protection as are the tens of thousands of young 
girls who stand behind the counters of the great 
city stores, who work under most arduous condi¬ 
tions, frequently under terrible pressure, and who 
never come in personal contact with their em¬ 
ployers and have no opportunity of stating their 
needs. It should, moreover, be pointed out that 
in most of the thirty-nine states where voteless 
women have secured these laws, they have never 
been given the means of enforcing them. They 
have obtained protective laws which protect no 
one. 


Hours of Work. 

The next point is the fact that night work for 
women is not prohibited in Idaho, Colorado, 
Wyoming and Utah. Why should it be? Is it a 
reproach to Rhode Island workingmen that they 


( 1 ) Mrs. Eva Hunt Dockery, who has served for ten years on the Legis¬ 
lative Committee of the Idaho State Federation of Women’s Clubs, 
wrote in the Woman’s Journal of Dec. 17, 1910, in answer to Richard 
Barry’s criticism that Idaho- had no law limiting women’s factory 
hours:— 

“Idaho has no factories where women are employed, so the need of 
this law has not been felt. Up to a very few years ago there was not a 
department store in the State, and the clerks in the stores were treated 
as they were in the good old days in the East, like members of the 
family.” 

(2) Mrs. Kelley in her “Ethical Gains through Legislation” (Mac¬ 
millan 1910, p. 200) gives the following account of the efforts of the 
Consumers’ League to help the shop girl. 

“For years the friends of the young clerks in retail stores have striven 
to obtain for them the poor privilege of being seated when at work, 
and with what success? In many states, laws have been enacted 
making diverse provisions for seats in stores. In New York City, 
for instance, the law has required, since 1896, that one seat be provided 
for every three clerks. In some stores the seats have been supplied 


11 


have never secured an eight-hour day for miners? 
Ought the workingmen of Nebraska to be dis¬ 
franchised because they have not passed a law 
protecting seamen? 

Legislation regarding the hours of labor for 
women is also discussed. Miss Bronson says that 
thirty-one states have passed laws restricting the 
hours, but that two of the suffrage States (Wyom¬ 
ing and Idaho) have not. It has already been 
pointed out that these two states had almost no 
wage-earning women in shops and factories who 
needed protection. Miss Bronson, however, makes 
a special point against suffrage in claiming that 

for the third floor, because the clerks were chiefly employed upon the 
first. In many stores chairs are abundantly supplied in the fitting 
rooms of the cloak, tailoring and dressmaking departments, for the use 
of customers, and are included in the general reckoning according to 
which there are, on the premises, chairs in the proportion of one to 
three clerks. In still other cases, chairs or seats are wholly absent 
from the notion counters and from the counters .or tables in the aisles 
of the stores where half-grown girls serve as sales-clerks. The absence 
of the seats is suavely explained by the fact that the employes are 
there only temporarily. But their employment lasts day after day, 
and the pretext is utterly transparent. In still other places, seats are 
provided ostentatiously, but girls who use them are censured or dis¬ 
missed. All these variations of the art of evading the statute have 
been found by the writer in reputable establishments in New York 
City.” 

Reference should also be made to a suffrage pamphlet by Mrs. 
Kelley called Persuasion or Responsibility?" in which she points out 
how child labor and compulsory education laws have in the same way 
turned out to be protective only in name, and she calls attention to 
the loss which results from the fact that the women who are ‘‘fitted by 
nature and by training to guard the welfare of the children are prevented 
by law from electing the officers who enforce the laws. For instance, 
the laws of New York are, in some respects, the most drastic and 
enlightened laws in the Republic. But the magistrates in New York 
City will not fine fathers who break the child labor law, and the com¬ 
pulsory education law.The Commissioner of Health 

makes no attempt to prosecute merchants and telegraph companies 
who employ children at night or without ‘working papers.’ The 
present Commissioner of Police has not punished one parent for flagrant 
and wholesale violation of the ‘newsboy law,’ which forbids boys to 
work after ten at night or before they are ten years old. ... If 
mothers and teachers voted in New York City, none of these things 
would occur. The same eager interest which has placed the child labor 
law, the compulsory education law, the newsboy law, and the juvenile 
court law upon the statute books, would elect a mayor pledged to the 
enforcement of those laws.” 


12 



Colorado, a suffrage state which does limit the 
hours of labor for women, has a very inferior 
and inadequate law. She does not seem to have 
discovered that this law was declared uncon¬ 
stitutional by the Supreme Court of Colorado 
in 1907, and no longer exists on the statute 
books. It is interesting, however, to note how 
she uses it. Disregarding a statement about night 
work which has already been referred to, her 
points against this law are so confused that it is best 
to disentangle them and discuss them separately. 

(1) It is claimed that the Colorado law, 
since it did not limit the hours per week, gave 
only ^^slight protection,^^ while the Nebraska law 
limits the number of hours per week, ^^thereby 
ensuring one day of rest.^’ Miss Bronson does 
not state here that the Nebraska law provides for 
a ten-hour-day and a sixty-hour-week, and does 
not prohibit Sunday labor; it is difficult to see 
how Miss Bronson understands the law to ensure 
one day of rest. On the other hand, the 
Colorado law provided for an eight-hour-day, and 
the number of hours per week was by this fact 
limited to fifty-six. Since, however, the majority 
of employers do not want their work places open 
on Sunday, even when this is not prohibited by 
law, the limitation of an eight-hour day pre¬ 
scribed in the Colorado law made for the great 
majority of working women a forty-eight hour 
week, in contrast to the sixty-hour week in the 
^^neighboring states of Oklahoma, South Dakota, 
North Dakota, Nebraska^ ^ which Miss Bronson re- 

(3) What Miss Bronson probably has in mind is the fact that Ne¬ 
braska in company with a large number of other states has a law 
prohibiting Sunday labor which applies to both men and women. The 
fact that Colorado has no Sunday labor law, except one relating to 
barbers, would be quite as good an argument against suffrage for men 
as suffrage for women since it is the men in the large metal working 
establisl^ents who are chiefly affected by the absence of Sunday laws. 
As these laws are very rarely enforced it seems absurd to discuss them. 


13 


fers to with so much satisfaction. Attention must 
in this connection be once more called to the fact 
that it is little short of ridiculous to discuss these 
laws as if they were all genuinely protective through 
proper enforcement. One may only hope that 
when women vote they will make these so-called 
protective laws something more than records on 
the statute books. 

(2) Miss Bronson’s knowledge of industrial 
conditions seems to be singularly at fault when she 
further criticises the Colorado law because ^^the 
clause restricting its operation to women who must 
stand at their work renders it practically ineffective 
in the factories of that state, where the manu¬ 
facturing is largely in what is termed ^seated’ 
trades—ready-made clothing, dressmaking, milli¬ 
nery and like occupations, and in candy making, 
box-making, and cigar-making. The great manu¬ 
facturing establishments, where women must stand 
at work, like cotton and woollen manufacturing, 
carpet weaving, etc., are not located in Colorado.” 

This statement is so incorrect that it seemed 
best to quote it in full. Miss Bronson claims that 
in Colorado the great majority of women are em¬ 
ployed in '^seated” trades; and candy-making, 
box-making, and cigar-making are cited as samples. 
But the last census of occupations showed 65 
women and girls in the entire state employed in 
candy-making (^^confectioners”), 11 in box-mak¬ 
ing, and 30 in cigar-making, in contrast to 1,184 
saleswomen, 762 waitresses, and 1,599 in hand 
and steam laundries, and surely saleswomen, 
waitresses and laundry workers are employed in 
standing trades. 

(4) Twelfth Census: Occupations: Table 33 . 


14 


Unsound Comparisons, 

Miss Bronson seems to have been unable 
to resist the temptation that offered to make a few 
other misleading and unfair comparisons before 
closing this part of her argument She calls at¬ 
tention to the fact that Massachusetts has a law 
prohibiting employers from deducting the wages 
of women when time is lost because machinery 
has broken down; and although it is, of course, 
well known that this law was passed to correct 
certain abuses to which women operatives in 
the textile mills were subjected. Miss Bronson 
chooses to regard it as an argument against 
suffrage because the women of Idaho and Utah, 
Wyoming and Colorado, have not wasted the time 
of their legislatures in encumbering their statute 
books with laws that were not needed. 

Similarly absurd is her attempt to use as an 
argument against suffrage the fact that certain 
non-suffrage states have statutes prohibiting the 
exclusion of women from occupations on account 
of sex. Miss Bronson should have known that 
these laws were passed because, in a few states, 
the courts took the position that, since women 
were not voters, they could not become practising 
lawyers; and the statutes quoted were therefore 
necessary to correct this situation. In other 
states, the courts took a different attitude. One 
of the present writers, for example, was admitted 
to the Kentucky bar a good many years ago in 
order to test the question when it was raised in 
that state and the position taken by the court 
when she was admitted made legislation on the 
subject unnecessary in that state; on the other 
hand, refusal of the court to admit Mrs. Myra 
Bradwell to the bar on the grounds of non-par¬ 
ticipation in government made a statute neces¬ 
sary in Illinois. The significant point is that 


15 


in any state where women do participate in the 
government there is no ground on which the court 
can uphold their exclusion from the bar, and 
yet Miss Bronson argues that the women in 
the suffrage states ought not to have the right to 
vote because they have not passed laws which 
would be entirely superfluous in any state where 
women shared in the government, and which were 
never needed or passed save in two or three states 
where the courts took the position referred to. 

Review of Conditions in the Six Suffragfe States. 

Washington and California, the newer suffrage 
states, have eight-hour laws for women, but Miss 
Bronson says that these laws ^Vere enacted under 
male suffrage.^^ So far as Washington is concern¬ 
ed, this is not true. Before equal suffrage was 
adopted, the advocates of shorter hours for women 
in Washington had tried for eight years to se¬ 
cure an eight-hour law, without success. After 
the ballot was granted to women the Legisla¬ 
ture promptly passed the law. 

In California, the eight-hour law for women 
was passed a short time before equal suffrage was 
adopted; but, as it was passed by the same Legis¬ 
lature which also passed the woman suffrage 
amendment to the State Constitution by a vote 
of 33 to 5 in the Senate and 65 to 12 in the Assem¬ 
bly, it certainly does not bear out Miss Bronson^s 
claim that such protective legislation for woman 
is adopted ^^above all because she herself is not a 
law-maker. 

Colorado in 1903 passed an eight-hour law 
for women, but it was pronounced unconstitutional 
by the State Supreme Court in 1907. In the last 
Colorado Legislature, a more carefully drawn 
eight-hour law for women passed the lower house 


16 


with only one dissenting vote, but was blocked 
in the Senate, like almost all other legislation in 
that year, by the deadlock over the election of 
a U. S. Senator. 

Massachusetts has just passed a 54-hour a 
week law for women, as the culmination of about 
forty years of effort by indirect influence to im¬ 
prove conditions for women in industry. Utah in 
1911 passed a nine-hour law for women, after less 
than two years of effort by its advocates. 
Women with votes got this law from the first Leg¬ 
islature of which they asked it. 

To sum up: Of the six equal suffrage States, 
three have passed eight-hour laws for women 
(though in Colorado the law was thrown out by 
the courts), and one a nine-hour law. Of the 
non-suffrage States, not one has an eight-hour 
law for women and only five have nine-hour 
laws. The Legislatures in most of the suffrage 
States have shown much greater readiness to protect 
women from over-work than the Legislatures in 
most of the non-suffrage States. 

The Right to Vote not Dependent on Hours of Toil. 

There is not the slightest ground for Miss 
Bronson’s inference that where a woman has the 

(6) Mrs. Elizabeth M. Cohen of Salt Lake City, chairman of the 
Industrial Committee of the State Federation of Women’s Clubs, told 
in the Woman’s Journal of May 27, 1911, how this was accomplished. 
The cooperation of women’s organizations with an aggregate of 50,000 
members was secured. Mrs. Cohen says: 

“The large number of women represented was both inspiring and 
appalling—inspiring the (women’s) committee to give the best that 
was in them, and appalling to the legislator who would like to be re¬ 
elected two years hence, and realized that 50,000 votes stood back of 
that representation. His discomfiture was increased by the know¬ 
ledge that some of his constituents, who were identified with corpor¬ 
ations and special interests, would demand an accounting. The 50,000 
votes prevailed. * * * If we had not had the vote we should not 
have succeeded.’’ 

(6) Arizona has an eight-hour law applying only to women in 
laundries. 


17 


same right to vote as a man, she ^^must give as 
many hours of toil per day as he/^ 

Justice Brewer of the U. S. Supreme Court, 
himself a suffragist, wrote the opinion of that 
court upholding the constitutionality of legisla¬ 
tion limiting women^s hours of labor. The de¬ 
cision says in part: 

‘^Even though all restrictions on political, 
personal and contractual rights were taken away, 
and she (woman) stood, so far as statutes are 
concerned, upon an absolutely equal plane with 
him (man) it would still be true . . . that her 
physical structure and a proper discharge of her 
maternal function—having in view not merely 
her own health but the well-being of the race— 
justify legislation to protect her from the greed 
as well as the passion of man.^’ 


Wag:es of Teachers. 

Leaving women in industry. Miss Bronson 
passes on to the wages of teachers. She calls 
attention to the suffragist argument that the 
ballot will lead ^To fair treatment of women in 
public service^ ^ as indicated, for example, by the 
laws of Wyoming and Utah, which provide that 
women and men teachers shall receive equal pay 
for equal work, and she ends by saying impres¬ 
sively, ^Tt is not denied that female teachers do 
not in the majority of cases receive the same pay 
as men for work of equal grade; but here the 
law of supply and demand is paramount, and 
legislation cannot affect itJ^ While it would be 
fruitless to go back to the ^^iron laws" of the early 
economists and to enter upon a long discussion 
of the out-worn doctrine of the inflexibility and 
almost sacred character of supply and demand, 
one may briefly call attention to the fact that the 


18 


supply of child labor has been very greatly re¬ 
duced in many states, and entirely cut off in others 
by means of protective legislation; and that in still 
other states the demand for child labor has greatly 
decreased as the result of inconvenient protective 
provisions in child labor laws, and the demand 
for the labor of men and women has correspond¬ 
ingly increased. 


Conclusion. 

In conclusion, it should perhaps be explained 
that this little pamphlet was written merely to 
point out Miss Bronson^s failure to understand 
the suffragist argument, which she attempts to 
criticise, and to call attention to the fact that her 
knowledge of labor legislation was not such as to 

(7) Miss Alice Stone Blackwell has kindly contributed the following 
interesting statement regarding Miss Bronson’s discussion of teachers’ 
salaries. 

The average pay of male teachers in Massachusetts is about three 
times that of women teachers. Miss Bronson says, with truth, that 
it would be misleading to infer that the proportional difference is so 
great when the men and women are doing the same work. She im¬ 
mediately goes on to make an elaborate argument, on the same mislead¬ 
ing basis, in the endeavor to prove that women teachers do not get as 
good treatment in the suffrage States as elsewhere. 

Let it be kept clearly in mind that the claim of the women teachers 
is for equal pay when they hold positions involving equal work and 
equal responsibility—not that an exact half of all the more highly paid 
and responsible places shall be held by women. 

The law of Wyoming and Utah, and the custom in the other suffrage 
States, is that women teachers shall receive the same pay as men when 
they do work of the same grade. Miss Bronson claims that women 
do not get it in Wyoming and Utah, “in spite of the law on their statute 
books to the contrary,’’ because the average pay of women teachers 
in those States is not equal to that of the men. The law does not say 
that their average pay shall be the same. It does say that their pay 
shall be the same when they perform the same work; and this law 
is enforced. 

A majority of the higher teaching positions are held by men in the 
suffrage States as well as elsewhere. This is a condition of things 
which will long outlast women’s disfranchisement. 

In Wyoming and other Western States, where women are largely 
out-numbered by men and the pressure upon the teachers to marry 
is very strong, the number of women who remain in the profession 
long enough to fit themselves for the highest positions is naturally 
small. But in the suffrage States all educational positions are open to 


19 


make her a reliable guide in discussing the subject. 
It is not necessary here to show that Miss Bronson 
misleads by refusing to note the obviously good 
laws which have been passed since women obtained 
a vote. It may be well, however, once more to 
call attention to the fact that the beneficial re¬ 
sults which suffragists believe will accrue to 
workingwomen when they have the vote will 
many of them be indirect and cumulative through 
a long period of time. While they are none the 


women, even that of State Superintendent of Public Instruction; 
and the salary is graded according to position, not according to sex. 

The figures given by Miss Bronson as to the average pay of men 
and women teachers in different States are therefore wholly irrelevant 
to the question of whether they get equal pay for equal work. 

Entirely misleading, also, is her statement in regard to the actual 
wages paid to women teachers. Eleven States, she says,(four of them 
suffrage States, by the way) pay women teachers higher monthly wages 
than Wyoming and Utah. Everybody knows that teachers are paid 
more in city schools than in the country, both because the work is 
harder and because the cities are richer. Wyoming has not a single 
large city, and Utah has only one. Yet Miss Bronson presents it as 
an argument against woman suffrage that seven out of the forty-two non¬ 
suffrage States pay women higher monthly salaries than these two 
suffrage States. Is it not more significant that Wyoming and Utah 
actually pay their women teachers at a higher rate than the much richer 
States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wis¬ 
consin, Oregon and more than a score of others? 

In all the enfranchised States, equal suffrage has helped the schools. 
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe sent a circular letter to all the editors, and to aU 
the ministers of four leading denominations in Wyoming, Colorado, 
Utah and Idaho, asking them what benefits, if any, had resulted from 
women’s ballot. Out of the 624 answers received only 62 were un¬ 
favorable; and among the benefits most often cited by the ministers 
and editors was that equal suffrage had made it easier to get liberal 
appropriations for education. 

Miss Bronson refers to the recent law granting the women teachers 
in New York City equal pay with the men when they do equal work. 
She says: “It is worth noting that this law was passed in a male 
suffrage State by a Legislature elected by male suffrage.’’ It is worth 
noting, also, that the teachers had to put in six years of hard and 
exhausting work to get it by “indirect influence,’’ while in the suffrage 
States the same result has come about almost automatically, without 
any labor on their part. It is also worth noting that Miss Grace Strachan, 
who led the teachers’campaign in New York, is a suffragist and, like Miss 
Margaret Haley and almost all the women teachers who have led suc¬ 
cessful fights for better pay she believes that their work would have 
been much easier if they had had the ballot; and she testifies that the 
difficulties which they met have converted the teachers to suffrage in 
shoals. 


20 


less valuable for this reason, it should be clearly 
understood that suffragists do not believe that 
within the first year or even within the first decade 
during which women have the right to vote, all 
possible reforms will be immediately accomplished. 
At the time when Miss Bronson^s pamphlet was 
published, Idaho had been a suffrage state for 
fourteen years, and yet her pamphlet is largely 
devoted to showing that women ought not to be 
allowed to vote anywhere, because in Idaho, a 
state in which the number of women is proportion¬ 
ately very much smaller than the number of men, 
the small minority of voting women had not in 
fourteen years placed upon the statute books 
not only the laws which were needed in that State 
but also an elaborate industrial code protecting 
factory women who did not exist. For example, 
during the first session of the legislature after the 
women secured the vote in Colorado, and within 
three years in Idaho and in Utah, a much needed 
form of protection was given to girls by raising 
the so-called ^^age of consent’^ from fourteen to 
eighteen. When the need of industrial protection 
is felt, similarly effective measures will undoubt¬ 
edly be passed. In the meantime is it fair to 
charge that the women of these states have fur¬ 
nished an argument against suffrage because they 
have not secured in a few years all of the laws 
developed out of a century’s experience with fac¬ 
tory conditions in the more highly organized in¬ 
dustrial states, when these laws would be super¬ 
fluous in the far western states in which they live? 

It is of interest that the workingwomen them¬ 
selves believe that they will have a more equal 
footing in the industrial struggle when they have 
the protection of the vote, and that the women’s 


21 


trade unions of this country and of England 
are in the front ranks of suffrage advocates. One 
who thinks earnestly about the position of work- 
ingwomen can never overlook the enormous indi¬ 
rect consequences of the ballot, — the gain in 
education, in independence, in self-reliance, and 
therefore the gain for workingwomen in the ability 
to organize. Everyone believes that the privilege 
of voting is educative in many ways. Working- 
women are only asking that they should not be 
denied this instrument of education and protec¬ 
tion, which no one would now think of denying 
to the workingman. To quote Mrs. Kelley again, 
^Tor any body of wage-earners to be disfran¬ 
chised is to be placed at an intolerable disad¬ 
vantage in all matters of legislation.^^ 

(8) An extremely interesting phase of the suffrage movement in England 
which has been much neglected because it is not spectacular nor militant 
furnishes valuable testimony from the ranks of the workers themselves 
as to the value they place upon the vote. They make but one appeal, 
“the political freedom of the poorest of the workers.” An extract from 
one of the tracts issued by the skilled women workers of the north of 
England to the less competent women of the south may be of interest: 
“In the old days men suffered as women do now, but since they got 
political power they have altered all that; they have been able to en¬ 
force a much fairer rate of wages. It is the women who are sweated 
. . . we who have no labor representation to protect us . . . 

without political power in England, it is impossible to get industrial 
justice or a fair return for your labor. . . . The cheap labor of 

women is not a local difficulty that can be remedied by local means; 
it is a national difficulty, and nothing less than a national reform, 
giving women the protection of political power, can make any really 
effective change in their position. So we are agitating for votes for 
women, and we appeal to you to join our ranks.” Again one of their 
“Textile Tracts” points out that the position of the voteless working- 
woman is a forlorn and difficult one. “She has no social or political 
influence to back her. Her Trade Union stands or falls by its power 
of negotiating; it cannot hope to have the weight with employers that 
the men’s unions have, for instead of being a strong association of voters 
. . . it is merely a band of workers carrying on an almost hopeless 

struggle to improve conditions of work and wages. ... A vote 
in itself is a small thing, but the aggregate vote of a great union is a very 
different matter.” (See Atlantic Monthly, vol. 102 , “The English 
Working-Woman and the Franchise.”) 


22 


■ 


**Woman Suffrage Co-Equal with Man Suffrage/* 


(From the Platform of Principles of the American Federation 
of Labor.) 


“I am for unqualified woman suffrage as a matter of human jus¬ 
tice. It is unfair that women should be governed by 

in the making of which they have no voice. Men would 

feel that they were used badly if they did not have that right, and 
women naturally feel the same.” 

Samuel Gompers, 

Pres. American Federation of Labor. 


"I’m in perfect harmony with the declaration of the American 
Federation of Labor, which has endorsed the demand that women be 

given the right to vote. I have always stood for the 

square deal, and that’s the only square thing on the woman suffrage 

question, as I see it. I personally believe that it would 

be for the good of us all for women to be enfranchised.” 

John Mitchell, 

Ex-Pres. United Mine Workers of America, 


"I would advise all the Workers of America to work for Woman 
Suffrage. 

Keir Hardie, M.P. 

Independent Labor Party. 


"The lack of direct political influence constitutes a powerful rea¬ 
son why women’s wages have been kept at a minimum.” 

Hon. Carroll D. Wright, 

Late U. S. Commissioner of Labor. 


"Nothing tells the location of our hearts more surely than the 
figures of the tax-list. Colorado spends the highest amount per capita 
for educational purposes of any state in the Union.” 

Helen Loring Grenfell, 

For three terms Colorado State Superintendent of Public Instruction. 


"I saw by the papers that the Governor of Massachusetts lately 
signed the 54 -hour law for women and children, but it was stated that 
he did so with hesitation, and only upon a promise that no further 
reduction of hours would be sought for some years to come. On the 
same day he signed a bill limiting to 48 hours a week the time that 
men should be employed on public works. He ejfpressed no hesitation 
about that. Do grown-up men employed at public work need more 
protection than women and little children working in factories and 
cotton-mills? What was the reason for this difference? There is only 
one answer: Women and children cannot vote!” 

Owen Lovejoy, 

Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee, 




